Morgan Allain is wife to Danny and mother to Ruby, who were featured on Sustaining Craft on my previous writing website. This was originally posted on November 15, 2016. I’ll be reposting some previous work here, including Ruby‘s and Danny‘s 2016 and 2017 features. Morgan is also the latest interview on Sustaining Craft, speaking to how the pandemic has influenced her work as an artist.

A sibling rivalry with one of her brothers turned Morgan Allain’s childhood love of drawing into a more serious pastime. “I wanted to be better than him,” said Allain, who now sells prints and wearable art as “The Inkling Girl”. “Then he got into sports and stopped doing it, and I kept drawing.”

At age 14, she snagged her first paid commission from the mother of a child she babysat. “I can’t remember how much she paid me,” she shared, “but I was pretty excited about it all.”

Three years later, while working as a nanny, the parents asked Allain to paint a mural in the girl’s playhouse. “It was super cute – flowers and fairies and bugs,” explained Allain, who spent two years with the family. “They hired me to do other art-related jobs over the course of the time I worked for them.”

Even with a lack of an arts program at the high school she attended, Allain maintained her interest in art and continued to draw and take art classes now and then until she attended McNeese State University. She majored in Art with a concentration in printmaking, which she enjoyed. “I never took any painting classes in college because I was a snob about it,” she shared.

While in college, she dabbled in drawing, book making, printing and other art odds and ends, until she earned her degree and promptly stopped printing, finding it much too expensive. “I picked up a watercolor set a year after I graduated, and that’s what I’ve done since,” Allain said. “I had to learn it all myself the hard way.”

Now, living in DeQuincy, La., Allain teaches a few private classes, but her projects are the majority of her work. “I love faces,” said Allain. “I always have. I’ve always doodled faces more than anything else, especially eyes and lips. Honestly, it’s my comfort zone. It’s comfortable drawing and what I feel most natural doing.”

Following her theme of beauty, Allain worked on her “Muse” series for two years, painting 48 faces she found alluring. She also paints animal skulls in a series called “Skull Candy”, and previously worked on a series of birds that featured her usual style of bright colors and paint splatters.

Her current project is a portrait series, called “Sugar Pop”. Each piece has a name that reflects the colors she selects. She started the series this year and has eleven paintings so far. “I just want to do as many super bright colors as I can smash in there with negative space for the background,” she shared. “A lot of artists have meaning in their stuff, or pretend they have a lot of meaning in their stuff, but I have no meaning. I paint what I think is pretty. That’s it.”

Allain paints beautiful things, but she also has a practical reason for why she creates. “For me, personally, art is important because I tend towards anxiety,” Allain shared. “When I’m creating, I’m a healthier person in general and happier. For my husband, he just loves to create and tell stories. I don’t tell any stories. I don’t care about that. I like putting the pictures I see in my head on paper.”

Her husband of eight years, Danny, is also an artist, with a degree in drawing and teaching. They attended the same college, and while the couple never had classes together, Allain often ran into him and would occasionally flirt with him in between classes. After her boyfriend broke up with her, Allain and Danny started spending more time together. They connected instantly. Allain thought he was cute, but also found him nice, talented, genuine and straightforward. “Within two weeks, I knew I’d marry him,” Allain shared. “He later told me he knew within the first month, and even told his mom he wanted to marry me. We just have so much in common; we really enjoy each other’s company.”

These days, Danny is working on a series called “Bones”, which Allain sells through her Etsy as “X-Ray Watercolor”. He has also written and drawn several comics, including a zombie western called “Dead Reckoning”, “The JoyKill Club”, and his most recent project for their daughter, “The King’s Lost Ruby”. “Danny wanted a comic book that our daughter could enjoy, filled with adventure, so he decided to create one himself,” Allain explained. “It’s wonderful! Funny, cute, and beautifully drawn. The protagonist, a little girl called ‘Frog’, is very much inspired by our daughter, Ruby.”

Ruby, now four, was just a baby when Allain first started her business, “The Inkling Girl” in 2012. Allain had worked at Starbucks for six years while doing commissions and keeping paintings and cards in the display case at work. When she decided to stay home to take care of Ruby, she started painting again and then making prints of her work at the local Kinkos. She moved onto having a booth at the local farmer’s market, but noticed that people weren’t very interested in buying a piece of paper. Allain realized she wanted to make wearable art, but wasn’t sure how to take the step from prints to jewelry. At the time, Danny was participating in comic cons with his comic books, and Allain joined him. At a con, she met Jessica von Braun, a fellow artist selling pendants featuring her artwork. “That’s what I wanted to do,” Allain said. “I picked her brain and she generously told me how she did them and where to get the stuff. Eventually I figured out to make them and put my art in them. It took me awhile. Then I went crazy and made earrings and rings and magnets.”

She’s been creating jewelry ever since as she continues to paint, making necklaces, earrings, magnets, key chains and more that she sells online and at craft fairs. She advises other artists to look for successful crafters and contact them. “Reach out to as many as you can,” Allain encouraged. “Some might be so busy or so overwhelmed and they can’t help you, but some like Jessica von Braun can help you. I think I figured it out a lot faster because she was so helpful. I make an effort to be the same to other people. I don’t keep secrets on how I make stuff because I didn’t come up with it myself. There’s no reason not to share.”

Follow Morgan on Facebook, snag a piece of art from Etsy, support her work on Patreon, and catch her on Instagram.